B.L.A.T. – gluten free

Making a B.L.T. (or a B.L.A.T. if you’re nasty) isn’t rocket science. Even making it gluten free isn’t any sort of feat of intellect or verve. The real trick to making a perfect B.L.T. is ingredient selection.

One of the lessons that was really hammered home in culinary school was that the simpler your dish is, the better your ingredients must be. You can make a meal (that people will pay good money for!) out of a sliced tomato sprinkled with salt, but you must use the absolute best, juiciest, most complexly flavored tomato and the flakiest, most delicate crunchiest salt. Ingredients matter and the fewer ingredients you use in a dish, the better those ingredients should be. Here are my must haves to make a perfect B.L.A.T.:

1. Bread. If you can eat wheat, you have limitless options here. If you cannot, you are still not without choice but you have an easy road and a hard road to choose from. The hard road is making your own gluten free bread. It doesn’t have to be too hard; there are a lot of fabulous mixes out there and bread machines make life much less complicated. If you are more ambitious than I, you can bust out the scale, weigh your half-dozen flours and whip up some artisan goodness. Hats off to you gluten free bakers. I aspire to be among your ranks once I acquire a kitchen larger than the average person’s pantry. But I digress. The easy easy way is to find a gluten free bread that you like. I found one. Finally. It’s Udi’s and if you are gluten free, you probably already know about it. It’s the ONLY gluten free bread I have found that you can thaw and eat right out of the bag without toasting first (gluten free bread is almost always frozen, otherwise it goes stale by the time you’ve opened the bag, taken out two slices and closed it again.) I love me some Udi’s and for the PERFECT B.L.A.T. I used Udi’s white bread, lightly toasted.

2. Mayo: It’s all about the Best Foods Mayo with Olive Oil. I could tell you that you must make your own mayo from scratch using farm fresh eggs but homemade mayo just doesn’t cut it when it comes to B.L.T.s. You need a thicker mayo that will cling to the bread without soaking it. If your tomato is as juicy as it should be, you will want the mayo to have some thickness to it. The olive oil doesn’t make much difference in the flavor but I like the idea of it so I use it. *Fun Fact: Best Foods light mayonnaise is made with 100% cage free eggs and they are moving towards using cage free eggs in their other recipes as well which is good because light mayonnaise ain’t got no reason!*

3. Avocado (optional): I am lucky enough to live in Southern California where we get delicious avocados at the grocery store and the farmer’s market and during summer they are pretty affordable. Find an avocado that is slightly firm but yields easily to a light squeeze. Check to make sure the area around the stem isn’t too soft, if it is your avocado is more likely to have brown spots inside.

4. Lettuce: The very best lettuce for a B.L.T. is lettuce that you grew in your garden. Some of us are not fortunate enough to have the space or terrain for a garden so the next best thing is fresh lettuce from a farmer’s market. I found this perfect little gem at my local market, it’s Bibb lettuce and I think it makes the best choice for a B.L.T. It’s soft but with enough crunch to give some texture. It has a wonderfully fresh, green flavor and it’s leaves are the perfect size to use whole. Iceberg gives you too much crunch, not enough flavor and Romaine is all kinds of wrong. Go with a nice Butterhead lettuce like Boston, Bibb or Buttercrunch.

5. Tomato: Every element of a B.L.T. is important but the bacon and the tomato are the real stars. Choose your tomato carefully. Again, a garden-grown heirloom is my first choice (it’s free after all!) but I also find that this time of year, farmer’s markets are teeming with stunning heirlooms. I taste every variety I can find and choose my final products carefully. I adore bright yellow pineapple tomatoes but their flavor is too mild and sweet for a B.L.T. The visually arresting green zebra is too acidic. My go-to choice is the Purple Cherokee. You can usually find big fat ones that will produce perfectly thick, sandwich-sized slices and the sweet, acidic and umami flavor combination is what you need to balance the other B.L.T. components. Why heirloom tomatoes? Many heirlooms tend to have a fleshy, webbed center that gives you more heft with less juice and fewer seeds. They hold together really well when sliced.

6. Bacon. Mmmmm. Bacon. I don’t even need to get into it here. Bacon is king, bacon is master, bacon is vying for world domination. You can’t throw a rock in L.A. without hitting bacon donuts, bacon bloody mary’s or bacon ice cream. I have no problem with this. My bacon of choice is Niman Ranch bacon. Here is their mission statement: “Niman Ranch and its U.S. farmers and ranchers raise livestock traditionally, humanely and sustainably to deliver the finest tasting meat in the world.” How can you argue with that? (Okay, I guess you can argue with that if you are vegetarian or vegan but I think you just might secretly covet the bacon.) Not only does Niman Ranch treat their pigs with care, they also make the tastiest bacon I’ve found. It’s thick cut and always has a great balance of fat and meat. My method for cooking bacon is on a cooling rack over a foil-lined baking sheet in a 375 degree oven for 25-30 minutes. This method turns out crispy, flat bacon every time with minimal clean up. No grease splatters on every kitchen surface, no bacon grease disposal woes and no deluge of soap to clean the skillet. Easy peasy.

7. Salt: Salt? In a B.L.T? There is no “S” in B.L.T!? Ah, but there is no “M” in B.L.T. either and where, pray tell, would we be without the Mayo? I shudder to think! The salt gets sprinkled on the tomato before the tomato goes into the sandwich. I love, love, love this Fleur de Sel de Camargue French Sea Salt. It has a bright crunch and a not-too-salty salt flavor that takes tomatoes to a whole ‘notha level. It also comes in it’s OWN little salt cellar for easy counter top access. I could go on about this salt for hours but I will spare you. It IS pricey but a little goes a long way and it will wake up your food in ways you can’t even imagine. Just trust me on this. (If you are a pepper-eating lunatic like my sous chef, you can also crack some black pepper onto your tomato but I would never do that for my own B.L.T.)

Now it’s time to assemble. I like to put my B.L.A.T. together in this order: Thick slather of MAYO on toasted BREAD topped on one side by sliced AVOCADO (the mayo holds onto the avocado so it doesn’t go sluicing out the back of your sandwich.) Next comes LETTUCE to form a cup for the BACON. On the other slice of BREAD the TOMATO sits on top if another thick swath of MAYO which anchors the tomato just like it does the avocado. SMUSH both halves together and DEVOUR.

P.S. If you are not hungry after reading this and looking at these pics, it’s time to check your pulse!